Greater importance is being placed on the accessibility to information today. For example, Japanese Industrial Standards Committee (JISC), which is the organization that establishes the JIS certification mark has developed the “Guideline for older persons and persons with disabilities—information and communications equipment, software and services (JISX8341), which is Japan's first standard that specifies detailed guideline on information accessibility. It also has announced detailed guideline on web accessibility. JIS standards are said to have a great influence, close to legal power, over the government and municipal offices in Japan, and the standard is likely to be included in requirements for procurement in building systems such as Web sites. Japan's amended Basic Law for Persons with Disabilities specifies that information service providers and information and telecommunications equipment manufacturers, in addition to national and local public entities, and telecommunications and broadcasting service providers, must cater for disabled people. Globally, there are W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) guidelines on Web accessibility.
Examples of systems that use a computer to automatically evaluate Web accessibility without human operations include an accessibility checker described in Non-patent Document 1, “Bobby TM (online)” (Internet URL: http://bobby.watchfire.com/) searched on Jul. 1, 2004. The accessibility checker allows violations of standards and problems in a Web site to be detected easily.